{"id":17852,"date":"2018-06-04T00:01:14","date_gmt":"2018-06-04T00:01:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/?p=17852"},"modified":"2018-05-24T04:53:54","modified_gmt":"2018-05-24T04:53:54","slug":"fox-n-forests-ps4-switch-pc","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/2018\/06\/04\/fox-n-forests-ps4-switch-pc\/","title":{"rendered":"Fox n Forests (PS4, Switch, PC)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>If you miss the good ol\u2019 days of 16-bit mascot platformers, then I\u2019ve got good news for you.\u00a0 Fox n Forests is designed to emulate the style of those kinds of games!\u00a0 You play as Rick the Fox, who must pair up with Patty the Partridge to reclaim magic bark from a talking tree to restore the seasons in a forest.\u00a0 In this 2-D platformer, your fox can run, jump, use a dagger and arrows to attack, and cast magic to change the seasons (what it is with video game foxes who can do that?<\/strong><\/a>).\u00a0 Anyway, the game is available to download on PS4, Switch, and PC, but reviewed on PS4 here.<\/p>\n

Rick the fox can attack enemies from a distance with arrows, but he can only shoot them when standing still.\u00a0 If he gets close to an enemy, you can push the same button to swing his dagger and dispatch them as well.\u00a0 Defeated enemies drop coins.\u00a0 Spend those coins in Patty\u2019s shops to upgrade Rick\u2019s moves and allow him to do things like double jump, ground pound, and spin attack.\u00a0 You can also buy more hearts for health and extend your mana bar, too.\u00a0 Lastly, potions can be purchased to give your weapons elemental attacks, among other things.\u00a0 In stages you use coins to activate checkpoints from Retro the Badger.<\/p>\n

Each stage is represented by a season, and you can change it to another by pressing the shoulder buttons.\u00a0 You can only change it to one other season, and you\u2019ll do this to solve puzzles and bypass obstacles.\u00a0 For instance, a spring stage could have lots of water, but change it to winter to freeze over the ponds and walk right over them.\u00a0 Or change a summer stage to fall and mushrooms will act as new platforms, and leaves on trees will fall, revealing secrets hidden behind.\u00a0 Changing seasons requires mana energy, though, so be careful as the mana meter fills up slowly.<\/p>\n

After a couple of stages, you\u2019ll fight a boss and retrieve some magic bark.\u00a0 Bring it back to the talking tree and you\u2019ll get a new kind of shot for your arrows.\u00a0 But you won\u2019t be able to unlock a new set of levels until you have enough seeds, which are hidden throughout the stages.\u00a0 Use your new arrow skills to hit colored targets to open up new paths to get more seeds.\u00a0 So yeah, you do a lot of backtracking, and it ends up being more annoying than fun, as it\u2019s just a way to artificially lengthen the game.\u00a0 And normally I don\u2019t even mind backtracking.<\/p>\n

The game has a few other problems, too.\u00a0 Because you can only shoot arrows when standing still, and melee attacks don\u2019t always activate or connect, play control feels a little sluggish and unresponsive.\u00a0 This is especially noticeable in a stage where you fly on Patty the Partridge in a scrolling shooter level.\u00a0 One other very minor problem is the characters are very generic.\u00a0 I guess they didn\u2019t want to make them look too cutesy since there are plenty of those kinds of fox mascots like Lucky and Tails.<\/p>\n

But if you don\u2019t mind the backtracking and slightly clunky controls, Fox n Forests does a good job of emulating a classic 16-bit platformer.\u00a0 Even the music sounds like the muffled orchestral sounds of the SNES, although the tunes here aren\u2019t particularly memorable either.\u00a0 But the game certainly reminds me of some of the titles I rented back in the 16-bit days.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Kid Factor:<\/strong><\/p>\n

Fox n Forests is rated E-10 with an ESRB descriptor of Fantasy Violence.\u00a0 You can hit enemies with arrows and a dagger, but they just explode when defeated.\u00a0 No worse than the platformers I grew up with.\u00a0 Reading skill is helpful for the text, and younger gamers may get frustrated with the challenge, although you can select from three different difficulty modes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If you miss the good ol\u2019 days of 16-bit mascot platformers, then I\u2019ve got good news for you.\u00a0 Fox n Forests is designed to emulate the style of those kinds of games!\u00a0 You play as Rick the Fox, who must pair up with Patty the Partridge to reclaim magic bark from a talking tree to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":17850,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17852","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-game-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17852","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17852"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17852\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17854,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17852\/revisions\/17854"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17850"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17852"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17852"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17852"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}